The United Kingdom

British ecommerce delivery platform Scurri announced it raised €1.2 million in seed capital funding, led by Episode 1 Ventures, ACT Venture Capital and Haatch. These companies joined existing Angel investors to fund Scurri’s expansion plans. The ecommerce delivery platform wants to develop further in the United Kingdom.

eBay has revamped its UK and German website to include several features that must compete with curation sites like Pinterest. eBay Collections allows shoppers to handpick items to create their own collection of must-have products that can be shared with others for shopping inspiration.

One in three of all sales that are made online in the United Kingdom take place on either a smartphone or a tablet. Visits to online stores via these mobile devices currently account for almost half of traffic. Especially in the apparel sector, mobile commerce shows strong numbers.

Market expansion is seen as a real ecommerce growth opportunity this year. Almost nine in ten European executives, surveyed by CyberSource, are planning to increase focus on expanding their ecommerce business into new markets in 2014. Emerging economies like Russia, Brazil and China are amongst the most popular destinations.

The online ecommerce economy of the United Kingdom is expected to generate the largest trade surplus in the world, surpassing 877 million euro. Online trade for the UK and five other big ecommerce markets is expected to grow fivefold over the next seven years, from 18,4 billion euros in 2013 to 96 billion euros in 2020.

Gap, the American clothing retailer, is active in Europe for quite some time. But while it has seen some steady growth in the United States these last couple of years, its presence in Europe is slightly less positive. Revenues here have come down from €516 million in 2010 to €507 million in 2012, despite continued expansion.

The total online economy of sold goods and services in Western Europe amounted €158.1 billion last year, but is expected to grow to €173.8 billion in 2013, according to new data from Ecommerce Europe, an umbrella organisation for online retailers active in Europe.

Godiva is expanding online by opening an online chocolate confectionery store in the United Kingdom. The luxury Belgian chocolatier has chosen eCommera and its cloud base ecommerce platform DynamicCommerce, which is powered by Demandware. The United Kingdom will be the fourth country where it sells its goods online.

Slightly more than 12 percent of the total online sales during the holiday season in Europe will come from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. That’s an increase of 68 percent compared to the same period a year ago. The growth in Europe is bigger than the mobile holiday sales growth in the United States.

What a customer wants to buy shouldn't be dictated by where he lives. That's what Nick Robertson, CEO and co-founder at Asos, told the audience at WWD Ceo Summit. He also thinks the high street is no longer the sole arbiter of fashion where choice is limited. "The high street's presence is being democratized. Twentysomethings have better things to do than go to the high street."

Although the retail industry in the United Kingdom is suffering, as more and more empty retail units arise, Amazon is not primarily to blame for this trend. At least, that's the opinion of Amazon's UK managing director Christopher North. “We are still a pretty small part of the total retail environment in the UK.”

The number of internet searches for UK retailers has increased, mostly thanks to Russian and Dutch consumers. According to research from the British Retail Consortium, in co-operation with Google, the number of overseas consumers searching for UK retailers grew with 23 percent in 2013's third quarter. Total retail search volumes grew 12 percent in the third quarter of 2013, compared with the same period one year earlier.

The mobile retail audience in Europe grew by 43 percent over the past year, with 20 percent of smartphone users visiting online retail sites and apps using their mobile phone. Also 1 in 7 smartphone users from the five leading European markets (the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain)have completed a retail transaction on their phone in a month.

A double digit growth rate above 10% in B2C ecommerce sales in Western Europe is expected for 2013. Total ecommerce sales in this region are expected to reach over 300 billion euros by 2016, as cross border shopping continues to gain popularity among European consumers.

eBay wants to gain more ground in the offline retail business as its new initiative Click & Collect will give customers the ability to pick up their products in store. Argos, the largest general-goods retailer in the UK, is supporting this new service from the start.